This document introduces Internet Research Ethics (IRE) 3.0. We begin with a review of the AoIR ethical approaches and guidelines that we now designate as IRE 1.0 (Ess and the AoIR ethics working committee, 2002) and IRE 2.0 (Buchanan,2011, p. 102; Markham &Buchanan,2012; Ess,2017). While driven by on-going changes and developments in the technological, legal, and ethical contexts that shape internet research, IRE 1.0 and 2.0 ground a basic ethical approachthat continues as foundational for IRE 3.0.
IRE 3.0is then illustrated by way of two elements –namely, (greater) attention to stages of research (a continuation of distinctions developed in 1.0 and 2.0) and what has become a standard problem of informed consentin particularly (but not exclusively) Big Data research approaches. We then list and briefly discuss the primary additional ethical challenges in IRE 3.0 as identified by the AoIR Ethics Working Group (EWG). We offer a general structure for ethical analysis, designed to help identify the ethically-relevant issues and questions, along with additional suggestions for how to begin to analyseand address these challenges in more detail. We offer this general structure as a guide for developing more extensive analyses of specific issues, both current and future. Initial examples of what such analyses can look like are offered here in 6. Companion Resources:Topical Guidelines and Ethical Frameworks.We hope that additional analyses will be developed in response to emerging specific and ongoing socio-technical developments. In this way, we hope to produce a “living document,” i.e., a set of guidelines that will continue to develop and unfold.